Month: April 2017

Following my exit from work we decided to take a short break with friends. They were heading down to a campsite near Mevagissy and we decided to join them for the long weekend.

Bertie had a few issues sorted out before we set off – the sump had been very rusty and needed replacing, and we decided to change the cam belt in advance of our journey.

Although it wasn’t the type of campsite we would normally visit (very family oriented with entertainment, swimming pool and on site bars and restaurants ) we had a very enjoyable weekend, drinking slightly too much but trying to offset it with a little walking and cycling. Above all though it was Bertie’s first outing of the year which allowed us to see whether we had any other bits and pieces that needed to be tweaked before we set off.

Unfortunately we seem to have a bit of an electrical issue. This is a bit frustrating as we have already had the charging unit replaced once. But fortunately nothing appears to be broken…yet. This one may take a bit of tinkering.

On Maundy Thursday I finally left my job. I’ve been working from home for the last few months since the Exeter office shut down and spending my last day on my own at home would have been a damp squib, so I decided to go into the Bristol office to have a little company (and attention). I’ve managed to drag out my leaving celebrations. Unlike many people who are made redundant I have known for a long time that this has been coming, plus I was asked to stay on for a few additional months to support the project I had been working on. This gave me plenty of time to anticipate my departure and have a few meals, drinks and parties in various locations around the country.

My lovely friends and colleagues treated me to a few gifts and cards and thoughts (some of them taking the mick as I worked through till 3pm). They know what I like and there were plenty of Haribo in the gift bags, including a Haribo pizza and this lovely Haribo tree (which will eventually be devoured -probably all in one go). More practically I also got a MiFi device to allow me to stay on line while we’re away and update this blog.

It was a lovely day, but the reality still hasn’t hit home. Give it a few weeks and I’ll finally realise that I’m not going back.

In late 2015 I knew I was going to be made redundant, it was just a case of when.

The blue ‘friendly’ financial services company I work for was taken over by a larger yellow company and a decision was made to rationalise locations. My lovely office in it’s wonderful south west England – near the sea, near the countryside – location was being shut down at the end of 2016. So I started to think about options, would I relocate, would I find another job or would I take an opportunity to do something different. When I first joined this company, 22 years ago, I had imagined spending a couple of years filling my bank account before embarking on a ‘gap year’. Somehow I never managed to leave, but maybe this was the opportunity to revive that dream.

I started to do some research, how could we travel and live within a reasonable budget so that we didn’t spend all of my redundancy at once? Where did we want to go? What did we want to do? We both have a bucket list of exotic locations – Angkor Wat, Tokyo, Patagonia amongst others – but we didn’t feel this is where we wanted to spend this extended period of time. Actually what we wanted to do was to take things slowly, amble about, explore, walk, cycle, kayak, grow roots where we wanted to, and move on when it was right for us. So a more nomadic existence seemed to fit the bill and a motorhome felt like an ideal solution.

Then a bit more research and – lo and behold – we aren’t the first people to have thought of this. The internet is full of blogs from people who have done the same thing, whether it’s a few months or a lifestyle choice; whether they are single, couples, or families who are home schooling; whether they like cities or the country.

So the decision was made, the plan was put into action, and we started to think seriously about implementing this idea.

There was lots of dithering over the name of this blog, but finally we just plumped for the ‘least worst’ and this is it. Now there will be a little bit of a learning curve to climb before I let people know that it even exists.